Author of Nights of Naked Mannequins Discovered He Couldn't Find the Truth on the Internet

TRONA, CA, February 01, 2011 (Press-News.org) If you can't trust the Internet or reference books to know famous lines from the great movies, where do you go? For Michael Lee Phillips, author of the first truly noir book of poetry, Nights of Naked Mannequins, published by Austin Hall Press, it was back to the original films. And the actresses who spoke those lines.

"They always get their lines right," Phillips said.

According to Phillips, the inspiration for the design and narrative development of his book is the genre of hard-boiled detective novels and the films made from them.

"My book comes from the dark, or noir side, of confessional poetry," he said.

It was while doing research for Nights of Naked Mannequins that Phillips discovered the extent of inaccuracies on the Internet. "I was looking for quotes from the film noir genre that I could use to begin each section of the book."

Phillips said that after he had compiled nearly thirty potential quotes he started to become suspicious.

"When I read the lines out loud, most just didn't sound right," he said.

And that's when he discovered something else disturbing.

The books he consulted had the same misquotes in them. "And the mistakes made in those books had been simply repeated on the Internet. It's possible that there are hundreds, maybe even thousands of Internet pages referencing those films, all with misquotes."

His first clue came with a quote from the film, Body Heat, which was released in 1981 starring William Hurt, with Kathleen Turner as the femme fatale, Matty.

"It's a film with a lot of great lines, and I thought I knew the one that I wanted to use," Phillips said. "But it was misquoted everywhere, and I began to doubt myself."

He decided to watch the film again, this time listening with headphones. He was looking for a line spoken by Turner's character, Matty. The oft-repeated Internet version was, "Well some men, once they get a whiff of it, they trail you like a hound."

According to Phillips she actually says, "There are some men, once they get a whiff of it, they trail you like a hound."

Some might call that quibbling. Not Phillips. "If you've seen that movie, you know that Turner's character, Matty, is very direct. She simply wouldn't begin a thought with a word like 'well.'"

"If you change what they say, you alter the character," Phillips added.

To make certain that the quotes used in his book are accurate, Phillips watched each film more than once while listening with headphones. "I played the scenes with the quotes that I needed over and over to be absolutely accurate."

His favorite line?
It's spoken by actress Mary Field in his favorite film noir movie, "Out of the Past," starring Robert Mitchum. Field plays the proprietor of a small coffee shop. Early in the movie she says, "Two things I can smell inside a hundred feet - burning hamburger and a romance."

Austin Hall Press is an independent publisher of fine literature. By working closely with a limited number of authors and graphic artists, Austin Hall Press strives to create singular, innovative and challenging works of high literary merit. We do not read unsolicited manuscripts.

Website: http://austinhallpress.com